(Between work and my phone dumping my comments before l get them posted—argh! —Try again)
Right— money is a tool humans invented for trade. First coins possessed value according to the kind of metal and it’s weight. Very handy tool. Say I want my nrighbor’s donkey so l offer him to swap fir one of my hogs. He has a hog already. So I sell my hog to a local market for some coins and buy my neighbor’s donkey. Wonderful invention. But the power of money quickly outgrew such mundane use.
No point in going into the history of money. But I want it understood that I agree that money isn’t evil in itself.
What is very like evil comes into play is when vast sums of wealth are held by only a few humans.
Increasingly we are not able to access the means to support ourselves through direct efforts i.e. on pawpaw’s back forty building a cabin, digging a well. and gardening. So we work for money to buy our living indirectly.
That is modern life. And many people have found it possible to flourish in the use of money by reinvesting their hard won surpluses into interprises that generate more money. If they do this frequently and successfully they will become wealthy . And one of the good things about this model of gaining more wealth and investing it is the likelihood that others will think of cool ideas and products to sell for money. And things go on getting better for everyone. Not bad. Certainly not evil.
But enter the nature change when a wealthy person becomes a disembodied Corporation. Then comes hazard .
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In 1898 Warren Bechtel from Peabody Kansas went into business with two mules and a wagon. Eight years later he bought a steam shovel and painted the words “W. Bechtel Inc.” on one side ((though he wasn’t incorporated for another 8 years) Five generations later Bechtel Corporation is the largest construction firm in the U.S. I like that story of a salt-of-the-earth type guy getting ahead like that.
But twenty years ago Bechtel Corp was involved in the kind abuse of power— legally—that can only occur when the basic structures of human commerce, finance , politics and human interactions are so out of balance as they now are.
When Bechtel Corporation and a few other parties took on the private management of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia the city’s poor (who subsisted on @ $100 a month) were informed that water would cost them $20 a month. So they return to using rainwater from cisterns instead . The Newly incorporated water authority told them they were in violation of the law.
You can find out what happened by googling “ The Cochabamba Water War”
I like to think that Warren Bechtel in his mule days would never have done that. But a hundred years later his good human heart didn’t thump in Bechtel’s Corporation even if his blood flows in the veins of its CEO. The corporate nature/structure can’t allow it.
The scale of big money is literally heartbreaking.
( sorry for typos- I gotta post this now)
edit:thedivision there and here and everywhere has to do with thorny matters rising from social inequities and how they become interpreted and politicized . Without compassionate listening to all the parties those in comfortable circumstances will feel threatened,feel demonized by the working poor.
The middle class will feel resentful in their own struggles.
And the poor — well, are they always with us? Never a serious voting block and easy to ignore—until you take even the rainwater away from them.